


let my love be called not idolatry

by delhuillier



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: (and Kliff has a bit of a praise kink), M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Size Difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 01:19:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delhuillier/pseuds/delhuillier
Summary: "Then Owain opens Kliff’s shirt, and Kliff wonders, when has anyone ever looked at him like that? Like Gray would look at Clair, and Tobin at Gray, and Leon at Valbar, and Alm at Celica. Never, that’s when; and oh, he’s blushing now, and his head feels fuzzy with the molten heat of it, with the weight and tenor of Owain’s gaze."





	let my love be called not idolatry

Around him, the musk of sweat, the earthy smell of the dirt and grass on which he lies. Between his legs, Owain’s knee reminds him of its presence when it grinds against his crotch; the swordsman presses against him, large and warm.

The sun’s overhead, so it’s hard to look at Owain; Kliff has to squint to avoid being dazzled. One part of his mind, at far remove, counts the tiny freckles sprinkled on the bridge of Owain’s nose—the other, larger part, is very, _very_ interested in the way Owain fits his palm against Kliff’s cheek and pushes some of Kliff’s unkempt hair out of his face. Owain’s thumb, rough with calluses from using his sword, glides over the delicate skin just under his eye, sending a not unpleasant prickle up Kliff’s spine to the back of his neck.

He can’t remember the last time someone touched him like that. If he’s ever been touched like that. Not even his parents had been so gentle with him; his father, of whom Kliff is only able to recall only pale, colourless traces, had cared more about the harvest than about the boy he’d helped birth, and his mother never saw him as anything more than a way to pave her way to comfort. Sometimes, before his father left, the man would pat his boy’s head or congratulate him for doing well in school, but it was always perfunctory. A duty half-remembered and fulfilled with the minimal amount of effort.

He’d heard the others talk of their parents with love, and felt only confusion. Felt that he lacked something essential; a gap he never had the tools to fill.

Owain kisses the tip of his nose and Kliff snaps back to the present, heat surging for a moment into his cheeks. “Owain, please.”

“Aha! I see I’ve freed you from whatever fell enchantment had you in its grasp,” Owain says. He parts Kliff’s collar, and then tugs at his shirt buttons, revealing the stark lines of Kliff’s collarbones, smooth skin, and still more smooth skin. “But I shall ensure you do not fall prey to such sorcery again—trust me on this.”

Kliff snorts, trying and mostly failing to ignore the flutter in his stomach as Owain makes quick work of unbuttoning his shirt. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“But what other than vile trickery could distract you now?” Owain asks. “Worry not. You’re safe with me.”

It’s a deserved, if gentle, reproach—Tobin has often told him off for as much, for not paying attention to what others wanted, for keeping them at a distance, treating them as things to be watched—and yet Kliff still has trouble biting back the sharp retort he wants to give. It does really make him feel as though there’s something wrong with him.

Then Owain opens Kliff’s shirt, and Kliff wonders, when has anyone ever looked at him like that? Like Gray would look at Clair, and Tobin at Gray, and Leon at Valbar, and Alm at Celica. Never, that’s when; and oh, he’s blushing now, and his head feels fuzzy with the molten heat of it, with the weight and tenor of Owain’s gaze.

Owain’s just as red as he is, or redder. But he doesn’t touch Kliff, not yet—instead he helps Kliff sit up, shift into a position where he’s on his knees, straddling Owain’s left thigh, hyperaware of its nearness to his groin. Owain’s eyes never leave Kliff as he slowly, gently slides Kliff’s shirt off him, over his shoulders, down his arms, over his fingertips. 

All of Owain’s attention is devoted to Kliff and Kliff alone, and yet Kliff’s thoughts distract him still. He should be giving Owain what Owain is giving him; he should be…he should be…

Owain swipes a thumb over one of Kliff’s nipples, and Kliff starts, thoughts disjointing, then orienting back towards the man that wants him. Owain’s hand drifts down to his hip, fitting comfortably over its curve, and in short order his other hand does the same on his other side.

He’d forgotten how _big_ Owain’s hands were compared to his own. He...likes it, if his erection is any indication.

Owain seems to be making to say something—probably about Kliff losing himself in his own mind again, when Owain’s right in front of him—but Kliff forestalls him by placing his hands lightly on Owain’s shoulders. (He’d forgotten how _big_ Owain is, full stop. Broad-shouldered, a hand or more taller than he, with a body hardened with muscle.)

Unable to meet Owain’s grey-green gaze, Kliff mumbles, “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

The apology comes late, as his apologies usually do. And it’s awkward, as his apologies usually are. Still, Owain seems to know what he means; Kliff feels something like a charge of static electricity roll up his spine when Owain cards his fingers through Kliff’s hair. Comforting.

“I’ve always watched you watching others,” Owain says, voice low, for once. The hand still at his hip tightens its grip. “So for now, will you watch me?”

Kliff shudders. “I will.”

The hand in his hair moves to his jaw, to his chin. Owain tips Kliff’s head up, and smiles. “Good. Behold me then.”

Owain leans in and kisses him, pushing their lips together in a way that betrays the eagerness that he’d been so deftly concealing behind his usual act. It’s a clumsy, blundering kiss that reminds him of another clumsy, blundering swordsman, one with sleek brown hair and a pretty face. One who had not, in the end, had eyes for him.

Just as Owain pushes his leg up to grind his thigh against Kliff’s crotch, he lowers his head to press his lips against Kliff’s jaw, to bite at Kliff’s right shoulder, and the many sensations drive all coherent thought from Kliff’s head. There’s only Owain, all around him—the hands on Kliff’s hips, steadying him as Owain lays down a trail of kisses along Kliff’s collarbone, as he mouths Kliff’s right nipple and then sinks in his teeth. When Owain comes up for air, a dizzied smile on his face as though he’s been in his cups, Kliff cups Owain’s cheeks again and pulls him in again with an urgency he doesn’t even try to hide—and Owain, ready and willing, obliges him, gives him what he wants, fits their mouths together in a long, hungry kiss.

“Kliff,” Owain says softly, when they separate once more. For a moment, words fail him; instead of speaking he drops his head onto one of Kliff’s shoulders, where his forehead presses against the reddening mark left by his teeth on Kliff’s pale skin. “Gods,” he says, after a moment, “you...you are a treasure, wrought by the gods’ hands from flawless marble and given eyes of clear rich-red corundum. Your hair is softer than the finest silks, your—”

Kliff swallows, the flush in his cheeks growing ever fiercer. “Don’t exaggerate. It’s stupid.”

“Exaggerate?” Owain raises his head. “No, I _never_ exaggerate.”

“Yeah, right,” Kliff replies. His voice is shaky. Add to the list of never befores the way Owain admires him now, using words that would sound utterly ridiculous were they coming from anyone else to paint him as something he is not. Precious. To be valued.

“At least,” Owain says, “not when it comes to you.” He toys with Kliff’s belt buckle, his hand tantalizingly close to where Kliff’s cock strains against the fabric of his clothes. “In fact, I think that even were I exaggerating—which I was very much _not_ —the words would still fall short of the mark.” His voice lowers, acquires an edge that trills at the base of Kliff’s spine. “When I think of you, I feel strong enough to do battle with a thousand men, and my heart swells so much I can hardly breathe. I am so weak to you, Kliff.”

Each word is like a finger tracing up his spine, and the blush in his face spreads to his shoulders and thence to his chest as Owain sings his praises. When Owain slips his hand under Kliff's crotch to palm the bulge in his pants, the noise Kliff makes, half a whimper and half a gasp, is one he'll probably forever remember with shame.

Owain knows just what the effect of what he’s saying is having, because he leans in to murmur in Kliff's ear, “Shall I go on?”

“I—I—” Where has his usual self-control gone? When had he clutched so desperately at Owain’s sleeves? He’s entirely at Owain’s mercy.

But he knows, deep down, he _wants_ this, and how much he does is almost frightening.

“You are so, so lovely, you know,” Owain says, punctuating each thought with a gentle squeeze to Kliff's cock. “Especially now. Look at you, flushed so prettily. Like a novel: a maiden in the arms of her love...”

It’s so difficult to keep his voice steady, and it’s so difficult to keep himself from dissolving in Owain’s hands. Still, he tries to project the same dry, acerbic tone he’s known for. “Really, a maiden?”

Owain moves his hand to undo Kliff’s belt and then his trousers. “Well, I’ve seen none fairer than you,” he says with a chuckle. His hand slides under Kliff’s smallclothes, and Kliff tenses like a drawn bowstring when Owain lays his palm flat along Kliff’s length, then adjusts his hand so he can grasp Kliff’s cock.

“You’re always in my thoughts,” Owain tells him, as he strokes Kliff’s cock, slow, steady. His blush is as deep as Kliff’s, but he seems inured to embarrassment’s touch for the moment; he, ever the actor, is playing his role as best he can. “I can’t get you out of my head—not that I would ever want to.” He takes a deep breath, and admits: “I’ve...I’ve dreamed of you, even, you so consume me. It’s shameful, I know. But it’s because you are truly wonderful.”

Kliff has no more words, cannot focus enough to summon them. The whole of him is coiling up, readying for that fast-approaching moment he longs for.

“In my dreams,” Owain says, his hand moving faster, “you were always...like this. And sometimes u–underneath me, too. I’ve wanted you for so long, Kliff.” Embarrassment—he _is_ admitting he has wet dreams to the one that stars in them, after all—seems to be threatening to make Owain break character. “Wanted to, um, touch you. Like this.”

Kliff’s hands clench tight in the fabric of Owain’s sleeves. He’s so _close_ , and was brought to this point so shamefully easily.

Owain rallies, and again he puts his rich vocabulary to work spinning not sweeping fantasies but reverent adorations. “And this, this is so much better than any chimaera my dreams could conjure. To taste your lips is to sample the ambrosia of the gods, and to listen to the sounds you make is to appreciate the sweetest music. That you’d be so good to let me lay hands on you like this, to let me exalt you as you deserve…”

Kliff’s vision blanks, and he comes, hard, into Owain’s hand. After a few heated seconds trickle past, Owain stutters out a surprised “Oh!”

Their eyes meet for the merest fraction of a second before Owain quickly averts his gaze again, a flush radiating up from his neck to his hairline; the shock of seeing Kliff come apart from something Owain himself did has knocked him out of his role. Instead of the suave Owain Dark, he’s the sweet, inexperienced Owain, for whom this all nearly too much. “You, uh, really liked that. You r- _really_ liked that...”

Kliff takes his first breath after what seems like ages, and uses it to say, “Shut _up_.” He slumps against Owain, heart juddering in his chest. “Just...shut up.”

Owain shuts up. And after a moment, he wipes his hand on his pants (oh, why does this fool turn Kliff into such a sap?), then tentatively puts his arm around Kliff’s shoulders. 

Tucked against Owain, lulled by the steady rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, Kliff steadies his breathing, and tries not to think about all the sweet nothings Owain purred into his ear. Embarrassing, really, that he’d been so...so flustered by it all. Are all it really takes to get him so worked up a few bits of praise?

And Owain hadn’t even meant half the things he said, like as not. Kliff is certain of it. How could he have? Kliff’s no royal, no marked child of destiny. Just a boy from a village in the middle of nowhere. That’s all.

Owain, apparently convinced that he’d been quiet for long enough, says, “So, do you…” He pauses. “...Do you, um, want to head back in? I can help you clean up.”

Kliff eyes him, and then glances down. _Someone’s_ still eager.

“I thought,” Kliff says—and it’s a struggle to get the words out, because flirting, dirty talk, that goes against every facet of his personality—“that you were saying you...wanted me.”

“Yes! I mean, no...”

Kliff arches a slim eyebrow. “No?”

“What I meant is—that is, I—” Owain’s stammering is almost endearing, and Kliff is starting to see why Owain had liked feeding him those honeyed words earlier. “I–I mean, I thought you’d be tired, and I didn’t want to push you, and...we’re outside, so I didn’t think you’d...” Owain shuts his eyes and chuckles despairingly. “Oh, gods, just stick a sword in me already.”

Kliff places a hand on Owain’s chest, where he can feel the lines of a well-defined pectoral beneath his shirt. “We _are_ outside,” he concedes. Not that Owain (or Kliff himself) had cared about that _before_ , seeing as they’d come out here for a reason, but... “Which means you should hurry up, doesn’t it? Before someone comes along.”

Oh, that was _so_ stupid, Kliff thinks. What am I saying?

But Owain, at the very least, looks utterly charmed—he’s looking at Kliff with stars in his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice thick with some emotion Kliff cannot decipher. “You’re right.”

They spread out the blanket they’d forgotten about at the beginning of this, and Kliff lays back on it to wriggle out of the last of his clothes (thankfully his trousers are unstained—smallclothes, not so lucky). Then he props himself up on his elbows, and watches Owain undress.

Despite his quirks, Owain is first and foremost a warrior, and the lean, muscled torso exposed when he sheds his shirt is only one of many signs of it. Kliff’s eyes wander over Owain’s powerful arms, the hands large enough that a single one could catch up both of Kliff’s slender wrists; the stark angle of Owain’s hip, the trail of hair that dips beneath the waistline of his trousers. And further down, the outline of his cock.

Owain undoes his trousers, pushes them down, and kicks them off a leg at a time. Before he gets rid of his smallclothes too, his eyes dart up to meet Kliff’s, and he holds Kliff’s gaze as he strips off the last of his clothing.

One summer’s day in Ram Village, months before Lukas’ arrival in the village, it had been hotter than any day in recent memory; and him and Tobin, Alm and Gray, they’d sought relief from the oppressive heat in the waters of the river that meandered its way past the town. Boys were boys, and all of them deep in the throes of puberty: dicks came out, were compared over good-natured ribbing, too-loud laughter, elbows to the side.

They’d settled on the yellowed grass on riverbank in the shade of an oak tree, all nude, and Kliff will always remember the moment when Gray reached out to touch Alm. As a challenge, almost. And then Tobin, not one to be outdone by Gray, grabbed _him_ —and how quiet it had gotten after that, save for the sound of their unsteady breathing as they’d fumbled with one another’s cocks.

Kliff will never forget the way Tobin tipped his head back, eyes sliding shut, as he came. He’ll never forget his slick fingers, or the warm arm Tobin tossed around his shoulders afterwards, or Tobin’s tired smile, meant only for him. Or the droplets of water, glittering in the sun, gathered at Tobin’s neck and in the dips of his stomach. Or the contentment he felt as the four of them laid side by side, breathing hard, in the grass that pricked pleasantly at their drying skin.

It’s not a bad memory, not really. If anything, it lets him see now that all his friends’ boasting back then had been just that, boasting. Because they all fall short compared to Owain.

Owain scoops up the pot of lubricant he’d brought (from some discreet alley shop in the castle town, apparently), and comes back to the blanket. He kneels between Kliff’s splayed legs, and there pauses. Worry tugs at the corner of his lip; a moment passes, then two.

“Owain?” Kliff says. “Any time now.” When Owain again does not move, Kliff adds, “Do you even know—?”

Owain nods. “Yeah, I know—Inigo, he, um, explained some things—I just, y’know, I’ve never...I don’t want to screw this up.”

“Give it to me, then,” Kliff says, his impatience surprising even him. He holds out a hand. “Come on.”

Owain complies, obviously grateful that Kliff has taken this into his own hands. Kliff takes the lid off the lube, tosses it onto the grass; and with a casualness that might have been forced—not even he can tell anymore—he slicks up the fingers of his right hand and pushes his legs further apart. Then on impulse, he angles his gaze up to meet Owain’s eyes, and tries on a smirk. “You watching?”

Whatever part of him that might have dragged him back from the brink of such exhibitionism has gone distant, muted, like someone calling to him from across a field—Owain’s rubbing off on him, maybe. But it has an effect he rather likes: Owain goes absolutely rigid, as though Kliff hit him with a Thunder spell. Owain’s Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps. “Always.”

That time on the riverbank with Tobin, Alm, and Gray had served another purpose, Kliff thinks, as he hooks an arm around his left leg at the knee and pulls it back to give him more space to insert the first finger. It helped him realise that the fairer sex held no appeal for him at all, because of the dream he had a few nights afterwards of Tobin fucking him senseless up against the village wall.

But none of them had ever talked about it, for obvious reasons—not even (he’d hoped at the time) Tobin. And maybe Kliff had held that against Tobin, for a while; and maybe that had been the reason why he’d treated Tobin like dirt at the beginning of their journey to save Zofia. Because he hated how starry-eyed Tobin got over Gray, and then Clair, while treating him no differently than before. Because the man he fell in love with turned out to be _utterly clueless_.

And those feelings (he introduces a second finger, and then a third; Owain’s rapt), he took them at the end of the war, folded them up neatly like someone packing up the clothes in a newly-ownerless house after the funeral, and put them away. Never to be brought out again, if he can help it.

Well, anyway. There’s another dopey idiot in front of him—maybe he has, Mother help him, a thing for them—but this one’s not Tobin. No, the way Owain looks at him, like he’s the only thing in the whole godsforsaken world, shows Kliff he’s not Tobin at all.

Kliff pulls his fingers free (biting down on the tiny sound he wanted to make), and says, “Owain.”

“Yes?”

Kliff props himself up on one elbow and goes for the lubricant again. “Come here.”

Owain obeys him, shifting nearer on his knees, and Kliff reaches out to cradle Owain’s cock in the palm of his hand. He marvels at the effect it has on Owain—the slight jerk of his hips as Kliff wraps his fingers around the thick, warm length of it, the way his entire body strains as he fights the temptation to thrust into Kliff’s hand.

Curious, Kliff drags the pad of his thumb over the slit, and Owain rewards him with a low groan and his name intoned softly, pleadingly. He smiles, pleased, and applies to himself to drawing out more quiet sounds of appreciation, to making Owain writhe under his slickened fingers.

Owain’s soon ready. Still holding Owain’s cock in one hand, Kliff puts the lube aside, and spreads his legs. With light fingers, he ushers Owain into position; he feels the head of Owain’s dick nudge at his ass, hears Owain gasp something he can’t quite make out. And in that jagged splinter of time, he comprehends just how desperately he wants Owain, because Owain, he’s the only person Kliff knows who ever tried his damndest to fill that gap inside him.

Then Owain pushes in, and for a moment Kliff forgets how to breathe. There’s pain, of course, there always is, but so full of Owain is he that it’s hard to focus on anything _but_ Owain. The worry creasing his forehead. The way his lips move as he asks if Kliff’s all right, as he apologises for inflicting such grievous and terrible harm upon someone so dear to his heart, someone he cherishes like Dorcas did his Natalie—

“Owain,” Kliff says, as the feeling of intrusion eases, is replaced by something more pleasant. “Stop talking.”

“But you’re—I don’t want to—”

Kliff loops his arms around Owain’s neck and pulls him down so they’re pressed close like at the very beginning, with Owain’s arms bracketing his sides and their faces inches apart. “I’m fine,” he says. “Just”—Owain, shifting slightly, renders him briefly speechless—“ _please_.”

Owain seals their mouths together, something Kliff becomes grateful for only a few seconds later. Because that’s when Owain pulls back and snaps his hips forward in one nigh-unbearable stroke, and Owain’s mouth over his muffles the cry that knocks out of him—and all the noises Kliff makes afterwards, as Owain annihilates the last scraps of composure he had been so stubbornly clinging to.

They could’ve been there for minutes, seconds, or hours—Kliff has no idea. His thoughts scatter with every roll of Owain’s hips and every searing, dizzying flash of pleasure that comes with it; all he knows is the slap of skin against skin, the tongue pushing into his mouth, the hands cataloguing every inch of his chest. The bliss on Owain’s face, so bright as to be blinding.

There’s a bite at his neck, but Kliff hardly cares. There’s a hand tangled in his hair, cradling the back of his head, but Kliff hardly cares. He digs his nails into Owain’s back, and lets the current take him.

Dreamily, he realises Owain is close. The rhythm Owain so naturally slipped into starts to splinter apart into messy, uncoördinated thrusts; his eyes close and his mouth falls open as he fucks Kliff to his breaking point. Owain presses his face to the curve of Kliff’s neck as he trembles and then falls still.

Kliff’s first thought, afterwards, is of warmth: Owain’s body pinning him to the blanket, the breath tickling his throat, the heat in his belly, the sun on his bare skin. His second thought, which comes to him as he lifts a languid hand to run his fingers through Owain’s hair, is _oh, Mother, I do have a thing for idiots._

Owain sighs when he feels Kliff’s hand in his hair, and nuzzles Kliff’s neck like some big, stupid dog. There’s cleanup that needs doing, a walk back to the castle that will no doubt seem interminable, but that feels all so unimportant right now as he lies here, underneath Owain, on a blanket in the grass with the sun in his eyes.

Owain eases out of him, and Kliff, suddenly so empty, hums an involuntary noise of protest. That makes Owain smile, so fond and affectionate it makes Kliff’s guts twist into a not unpleasant knot.

“Hey,” Owain says. He settles onto his side by Kliff, and rests a hand on his chest just to the right of his sternum, where he can no doubt feel Kliff’s thudding heart.

“What.” He knows what’s coming, and doesn’t think he’ll be able to face it.

There’s a pause, then Owain swoops in to kiss his cheek. “Oh, nothing.”

Kliff lifts his head off the blanket to give him a disbelieving look. “Wh—that wasn’t _nothing_.”

“Just was wondering if you wanted me to get you some fresh clothes,” Owain says, too brightly, absolutely lying through his annoyingly perfect teeth.

For a moment, Kliff feels knocked sickeningly off balance, as though he’s put his foot forward in a darkened hallway and found only air. But then, as Owain keeps smiling at him, a tiny spark of realisation flares in his mind, and provides the illumination he needs to divine the path before him.

“Don’t bother,” Kliff says at last, dismissive. “Let them talk. I don’t care.”

Owain nestles up against him, and puts his head on Kliff’s shoulder. “Aw. Love you too.”

Kliff splutters, his face turning almost as red as it had when Owain had had his cock in his grasp. “I didn’t—”

“—say that, yeah, I know.” Owain hums a laugh, the sound thrumming through the chambers of Kliff’s heart. “I still meant it.”

And as Kliff, face hot with embarrassment, squints up at the sky above, he finds he has nothing at all to say to that.

Except one thing: “...Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Affectionate guy with one grumpy boi is a dynamic I'm far too weak to. Also, Owain being a big lug in this is definitely just due to how the Heroes art for these two makes Kliff seem tiny in comparison to him.
> 
> And you know, I find Owain very difficult to write, because of how much posturing he does. I've never had the best grasp on his 'natural' voice.


End file.
